Is Twitter's Future in Jeopardy?

A new report reveals that only 11 percent of Twitter users who signed up in 2012 are still tweeting today.

The social media platform has celebrated millions of active users, but last year when it offered its first IPO, it became obvious that monetizing the service would be a problem. While one reason was the fact that few Twitter users ever see the ads it sells, there were other missteps in Twitter’s IPO launch.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo reportedly told employees that by the end of 2013, the service would have 400 million monthly active users. With a real user number of 241 million, Twitter missed the mark analysts thought it would reach.

Additionally, Twitter suffered some loss of earnings. In February, Bloomberg reported, “Net loss was $511.5 million compared with $8.7 million a year earlier, and was more than double analysts’ projections of $253.5 million.”

But that isn’t all.

According to a forthcoming report by Twitter monitoring service Twopcharts, the number of actual users who stick with the service seems to be a statistic that threatens Twitter’s future. Apparently, while Twitter does have a high signup rate, Twitter has trouble getting those members to regularly use it.

“Twopcharts’s data show that Twitter accounts created in more recent years are less active than the ones started by early adopters from 2006-2011,” The Wall Street Journalreports. “About 25% of the accounts created in 2008 are still tweeting today whereas only about 10.7% of the accounts created in 2012 are tweeting a little over a year later.”

Another major problem that Twitter has is the proliferation of spam accounts abusing the system and vexing active users. Reports show that since the start of 2014, half of new accounts were suspended by Twitter, under suspicion of being spam accounts. Since its launch, Twitter has suspended approximately 500 million accounts, most of which were suspected of being spam accounts.

These statistics seem to suggest a troubled future for the social media giant.